March 2, 2009
Alison Nathan, the 2008-09 Alexander Fellow at NYU Law, has been appointed associate White House counsel in the new administration. Nathan, a specialist in procedure, federal courts, habeas corpus, and U.S. death penalty constitutionality, was a visiting assistant professor at Fordham Law School and an associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in Washington, D.C. She also served as national voter protection senior advisor to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, as well as a member of its LGBT Advisory Committee.
As an Alexander Fellow at the Law School, Nathan examined the interest in finality as a key procedural value in American procedural law. A graduate of Cornell Law School, where she was editor-in-chief of the Cornell Law Review, Nathan clerked for Judge Betty Binns Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and for Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court.